While the policy shift allows for a lift on travel and remittance restrictions and paves the way for greater telecommunications links with the island, some bloggers are concerned that the measure has not gone far enough (e.g.: the trade embargo still remains in place), rendering the new policy, in the words of The Cuban Triangle, “humanitarian, unsustainable, small-bore, a kind of inoculation, and a question mark.”

But it means that it would be totally impossible for the leader to just come to the floor with a series of a few dozen small-bore proposals on a related topic and then let each one be voted on individuallly.

Obama advocates argue that he is temperamentally ill suited to such a strategy, both because he is more interested in broad change than small-bore tinkering and because it requires a level of deal-making that he has not appeared comfortable with.

And the Zazi case forcefully demonstrated that al-Qaeda was not waiting to launch “the big one,” but was in fact content to get any kind of terrorist operation going in the United States, even a relatively small-bore attack.

Even Saddam Hussein had left the staunchly independent Sunni tribes of Anbar pretty much to their own devices—mostly small-bore smuggling rackets—and the tribes did not appreciate al-Qaeda muscling into their turf, nor did they subscribe to its vision of a Taliban-style utopia.